“Adolescence” co-creator Stephen Graham isn’t exactly shy when it comes to praising Owen Cooper, the young actor at the center of his hit Netflix limited series.
“This may be a big thing to say, but I haven’t seen a performance [of this caliber] from someone so young since Leo [DiCaprio] in ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,’” Graham tells me via Zoom. “And I say that because I love Leo and he’s a good friend. And that’s a performance beyond someone his age. It’s the same when I watch Owen.”
Not content to leave it at that, Graham later points out that he recently related a story on Graham Norton’s BBC talk show about the time he told Cooper’s mom that her son was the “next Robert De Niro.” Cooper happened to be on the show too, taking it all in, smiling shyly. And wouldn’t you know it, De Niro was there as well, sitting next to Cooper on the couch, giving him a tender pat on the knee.
So, DiCaprio, De Niro … Do you want to drop a Brando comparison to complete the trifecta? I ask.
“I can’t find enough superlatives to describe the boy,” says Graham, who also co-wrote the show and stars as his father.
Honestly, I can’t either. Apart from Noah Wyle’s heroic, beleaguered doctor in “The Pitt,” you could make the case that Cooper’s turn as Jamie, a 13-year-old accused of murdering a classmate, is the year’s best work on television. The show’s third episode, a two-hander where Jamie is interviewed and evaluated by a psychologist (Erin Doherty) at a juvenile detention facility, is an astonishing showcase, particularly when you consider that it, like all four of the series’ episodes, is shot as a continuous scene.
It also bears mentioning that “Adolescence” marks Cooper’s professional debut as an actor. He is now 15.
It’s an extraordinary story, though you have to wonder if some Emmy voters will see it that way. The Emmys have not embraced child actors over the years, with only four teenagers winning primetime trophies: Roxana Zal, 14 when she won for her supporting role in the 1984 TV movie “Something About Amelia”; Kristy McNichol, 15 and 17 at the time of her two supporting drama actress wins for the 1970s series “Family”; Scott Jacoby, 16, for the 1972 TV movie “That Certain Summer”; and Anthony Murphy for the 1971 British limited series “Tom Brown’s Schooldays.”
Murphy was 17 when he won and, like Cooper, had never acted professionally. And after “Tom Brown’s Schooldays,” he never acted again, pursuing painting instead and enjoying a long career in that medium.
Perhaps that explains Emmy voters’ reluctance to go all in and reward young actors. Are they in it for the long haul? Or are they going to do something crazy like go off to college and chase a more stable career, like … just about any other line of work?
With Cooper, such concerns appear to be unfounded. Since “Adolescence,” he has made a BBC comedy, “Film Club,” starring Aimee Lou Wood, and just finished playing young Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell’s upcoming adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.”
Fennell obviously saw the tortured antihero that everyone else did in “Adolescence.”
Easy to see that now. But finding the next De Niro from a pool of 500 to 600 young actors, most of them unknowns, almost all of them around Jamie’s age, was a taller order. Graham says the casting team had considered looking for an older boy, given the demands of the role and the show’s unsettling subject matter.
“But that age is unique,” Graham says. “It’s that breaking point. Your body is changing. Your voice is changing. We needed that authenticity.”
That’s all well and good. But what was it like for Doherty, a veteran actor with many credits — including Princess Anne in “The Crown” — to take on a single-shot, 52-minute episode requiring her to parry and push and prod a young actor on his first job?
“It was definitely the cause of most of my nerves before I met Owen,” Doherty tells me. “I was so unflinchingly aware that it is a huge ask, even for an actor who has been doing it for 40 years.”
Then she met him on the first day of rehearsal, and Doherty, who says she is obsessed with the elements, saw that Cooper was a “very earthy human being.” Grounded. Present. Real.
They rehearsed for two weeks and then spent a week shooting the episode, Monday through Friday, two takes a day. They used the last take. Probably because they felt confident they had already nailed it, Doherty says that last time through was like they were “doing it for free.”
“There was more of a playful dynamic between the two of us,” Doherty says. “We were poking each other in ways we hadn’t done before.”
As Doherty’s psychologist nudges Jamie to recognize truths about himself that he doesn’t want to acknowledge and admit that he holds certain toxic beliefs, you see Cooper shift Jamie from guarded innocence to explosive rage and then to surrendering desperation. There are a lot of showy moments, but one of the best comes shortly after the two characters meet when Jamie lets out a yawn. “Am I boring you?” she asks. Look at that self-satisfied smile on his face.
“That was the only time he did that,” Doherty says. “And Owen was probably genuinely tired. But also, I’m thinking, ‘This kid Jamie is really trying to push my buttons.’ We were really playing a cat-and-mouse game.”
With young actors, there’s sometimes the perception that the director is guiding them — which, of course, is the director’s job with any actor. But in that moment, you see Cooper using an accident and turning it into something malevolent.
“Owen has an unspoken magic,” Doherty says. “That’s nothing to do with his age. He has something that can’t be taught, and it’s always going to be with him.”
